Thursday, September 19, 2013

September 19, 2013 - SPACE - Well, it seems that the much anticipated Comet ISON will have company
when it’s in the sky later this year. Famed comet discoverer Terry
Lovejoy has found another comet, and the latest Comet Lovejoy
will be joining ISON in the northern sky in December.

In fact, they will
be keeping each other company from the start of November – a prospect
which will have comet observers and astrophotographers alike drooling,
I’m sure.

As this chart – created with the fantastic planetarium smartphone App
“Sky Safari” shows – at the moment Comet Lovejoy is in the
constellation of Monoceros, snuggling up next to Orion in the early
morning sky…

…and it is far too faint to see through binoculars or even a small
telescope, But that will change as the days and weeks pass, and by
November it should be visible in more modest equipment. Initial
calculations suggest the latest Lovejoy won’t reach naked eye
visibility, reaching a maximum magnitude of between 8 and 9, but as
comet experts and observers always say it’s almost impossible to try and
predict what a comet is going to do, so the best thing is just to work
out where it is going to be and go take a look at it yourself.

On November 29th, when ISON has rounded the Sun and, we hope, begins
to unfurl a tail and become visible to the naked eye, Comet Lovejoy will
be close by. Here’s what comet observers will be looking at and
photographing then…

Note: you can see the Sky Safari software has shown where Comet
ISON’s tail will be at that time, poking up from behind the horizon at
the bottom left there, but there’s no way of knowing if it will actually
be visible.

By mid-December, when many comet experts are predicting ISON may be
at its best as it climbs up towards the stars of the Plough, Comet
Lovejoy will be nearby…

That’s a pretty exciting prospect for comet observers. But what caught
my eye was what we have a chance of seeing a month earlier, before dawn
on the morning of November 9th. Given clear skies, and a lot of luck, we
have a chance of seeing a veritable “Comet Convoy” as 3 comets line up
with Mars and Jupiter in the south east before sunrise…

And how bright will they all be? Well, from the left, Comet Encke
will be magnitude 6, ISON should be hovering around 6 or 7, and Lovejoy
will be still very faint at around magnitude 9. That means, especially
in a brightening sky, none of them will probably be visible to
the naked eye, but this parade will have astrophotographers out in their
thousands I should think, and comet observers will be giddy with
excitement.

So… that’s going to be a right old treat, isn’t it? Typical. You wait ages for a good comet, then three come along at once - Cumbrian Sky.

September 19, 2013 - SPACE - Intensive charged particles from the sun may have caused some of the recent satellite malfunctions, scientists say.

The sun, from 93 million miles away, fires solar flares, coronal mass ejections and other space weather events. These "solar storms" can send highly energized particles heading toward Earth. Some of them disrupt the satellites that people rely on to watch TV and Internet purposes.

Intensive charged particles from the sun and may have caused some recent satellite
malfunctions, scientists say.(Photo : NASA)

The team's research is published in the journal Space Weather.

Scientists from MIT investigated the space weather conditions to understand the high-speed disturbances in space, which caused 26 failures in eight geostationary satellites operated by the London-based company Inmarsat.

Geostationary satellites orbit at the same rate as the Earth's rotation, which allows the satellites to maintain a constant location relative to the planet throughout their lifetime.

Study found that most of the problems, from 1996 to 2012, overlapped with high-speed particle activity during declining phases of the solar cycle.

Highly reactive electronics onto these satellites are covered with layers of protective shielding. But, this armor is worn-out by radiation in due time, degrading its components and performance.

The scientists believe that this particle flux may have accumulated in the satellites over time, which created internal charging and damaged the amplifiers inside the orbiting objects.

"If a company has invested over $200 million in a satellite, they need to be able to assure that it works for that period of time. We really need to improve our method of quantifying and understanding the space environment, so we can better improve design."

Space weather can be much more vibrant than expected by the models engineers use when crafting the satellites, explained Kerri Cahoy, a co-author of the study and an assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT.

Image Credit: Thinkstock.com

"There are many different ways that charged particles can wreak havoc on your satellite's electronics," Cahoy said in a statement.

"The hard part about satellites is that when something goes wrong, you don't get it back to do analysis and figure out what happened."

Some assumptions about the Space weather risks must be revised, Lohmeyer and Cahoy's findings suggested.

Researchers often consider geomagnetic disturbances when measuring the susceptibility of the spacecraft to space weather, according to a statement from MIT.

However, most of the amplifier failures happened during times of low geomagnetic activity that would usually be regarded safe, Lohmeyer said.

"If we can understand how the environment affects these satellites, and we can design to improve the satellites to be more tolerant, then it would be very beneficial not just in cost, but also in efficiency," Lohmeyer added. - Design & Trend.

September 19, 2013 - UNITED STATES - Antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea, a diarrhea-causing superbug and a
class of fast-growing killer bacteria dubbed a "nightmare" were
classified as urgent public-health threats in the United States on
Monday.

According to a new report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC), at least 2 million people in the United States
develop serious bacterial infections that are resistant to one or more
types of antibiotics each year, and at least 23,000 die from the
infections.

"For organism after organism, we're seeing this
steady increase in resistance rates," Dr Thomas Frieden, director of the
CDC, said in a telephone interview. "We don't have new drugs about to
come out of the pipeline. If and when we get new drugs, unless we do a
better job of protecting them, we'll lose those, also."

Overprescribing
of antibiotics is a chief cause of antibiotic resistance, affording
pathogens the opportunity to outwit the drugs used to treat them. Only a
handful of new antibiotics have been developed and brought to market in
the past few decades, and only a few companies are working on drugs to
replace them.

In addition to resistant gonorrhea, the others now
seen as urgent threats, according to the first-of-its-kind report
released on Monday, are C. difficile and the killer class known as
carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, or CRE.

The report was conceived to bring together as much information as
possible about drug-resistant superbugs and how to slow their spread,
with a hope of preserving the remaining drugs that still work, Frieden
said.

The United States is not alone in raising the alarm over
antibiotic drug resistance. Last March the chief medical officer for
England said antibiotic resistance poses a "catastrophic health threat".
That followed a report last year from the World Health Organization
that found a "superbug" strain of gonorrhea had spread to several
European countries.

The CDC report ranks the threat of
drug-resistant superbugs into three categories - urgent, severe and
concerning - based on factors such as their health and economic impacts,
the total number of cases, the ease with which they are transmitted and
the availability of effective antibiotics.

Among the top three
threats deemed "urgent" is CRE, which Frieden last March called a
"nightmare bacteria" because even the strongest antibiotics are not
effective against it.

According to the report, CRE accounts for
9,300 healthcare-associated infections. The two most common types of CRE
- carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella spp. and carbapenem-resistant E. coli
- account for some 600 deaths each year.

"For CRE, we're seeing increases from 1 state to 38 states in the last decade," Frieden said.

HOSPITAL THREAT

C.
difficile, the most common hospital-based infection in the United
States, made the list of urgent threats both because it has begun to
resist antibiotics and because it preys on the overuse of antibiotics.

C.
difficile, which causes life-threatening diarrhea, spreads from person
to person on contaminated equipment and on the hands of healthcare
workers and visitors. It is especially stubborn in hospitals because of
the widespread use of antibiotics, which kill protective bacteria in the
gut for months, allowing invaders such as C. difficile to flourish.

According
to the report, C. difficile causes 250,000 infections and kills 14,000
people in the United States each year, adding $1 billion annually in
excess medical costs. Deaths from C. difficile rose 400 percent from
2000 to 2007 due to the emergence of a drug-resistant strain of the
bacteria.

C. difficile, pictured here, is the most common hospital-based infection in the United States. (CDC)

The third "urgent" threat in the report is drug-resistant Neisseria gonorrhea, which causes 246,000 U.S. cases of the sexually transmitted disease gonorrhea each year. Gonorrhea is increasingly becoming resistant to tetracycline, cefixime, ceftriaxone and azithromycin - formerly the most successful treatments for the disease.

Gonorrhea is especially troublesome because it is easily spread, and infections are easily missed. In the United States, there are approximately 300,000 reported cases, but because infected people often have no symptoms the CDC estimates the actual number of cases is closer to 820,000.

If left untreated, gonorrhea can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy, stillbirths, severe eye infections in babies and infertility in men and women.

"The three organisms that have been chosen as urgent are all increasing at an alarming rate to which therapies are limited," said Dr Edward Septimus, an infectious disease expert at HCA Healthcare System in Houston, Texas, and a member of the Infectious Diseases Society of America's Antimicrobial Resistance Workgroup.

Septimus, who was not involved with the CDC report, said the pathogens in the urgent and serious categories - which include Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, and drug-resistant tuberculosis - are "certainly worthy of immediate response. I do believe it's a looming public-health crisis," he said.

WATCH: CDC warns of 'urgent' antibiotic-resistant threats.

In addition to ranking the threat of superbugs, the report outlines a four-point plan to help fight the spread of antibiotic resistance.

Not surprisingly, it underscores the need for new antibiotics, citing ever-slowing development efforts by pharmaceutical companies due to the high cost of such programs and relatively low profit margins of the drugs.

It also stresses the need for hospitals to prevent infections from occurring and to contain the spread of resistant infections; carefully tracking the spread of resistant bacteria; and ensuring that antibiotics are prescribed only to patients who need them.

"It's not too late," Frieden said. "There are things we can do that can stop the spread of drug resistance. We need to scale up the implementation of those strategies." - FOX News.

Rescued people are taken to safety by Mexican Federal Police officers on an inflatable
dinghy in a flooded street of Acapulco

Floodwaters have wreaked havoc in the Pacific port.

Storms have inundated vast areas of Mexico since late last week,
wrecking roads, destroying bridges and triggering landslides that buried
homes and their occupants.

Roads became raging rapids in the Pacific resort of Acapulco, stranding 40,000 tourists.

Emergency
services said heavy rains were beating down on the north-western state
of Sinaloa and that hundreds of people had been evacuated from coastal
communities.

An aerial view of a flooded neighbourhood is seen in Acapulco September 17, 2013. REUTERS/Stringer

An aerial view of a flooded neighbourhood is seen in Acapulco September 17, 2013. REUTERS/Stringer

People carry looted goods as they walk through a flooded street in Acapulco September 18, 2013. REUTERS/Jacobo Garcia

People carry looted goods as they walk through a flooded street in Acapulco September 18, 2013. REUTERS/Jacobo Garcia

The US National Hurricane Center said an area of low pressure over the oil-producing southern Gulf of Mexico had a 60% chance of becoming a tropical cyclone over the next 48 hours and could dump heavy rains on already flooded areas in southern and eastern Mexico.

The fresh misery comes after tropical storms Ingrid and Manuel converged on Mexico from the Gulf and the Pacific over the weekend, triggering the flash floods.

Ingrid dissipated, but Manuel then strengthened and gained hurricane strength before it was downgraded again to a tropical storm.

More than a million people have been affected across the country, and 50,000 have been evacuated from their homes.

WATCH: Mexico storm turns into catastrophic hurricane.

Winds blew off the roofs of houses and 11 rivers in the state broke their banks. Residents waded through muddy, chest-high waters in some areas.

The flooded tourist resort of Acapulco further south, which was hit by looting, was still reeling.

Tens of thousands of people remained trapped in the city, awaiting evacuation as airlines and the armed forces worked to get them home.

WATCH: Dozens missing after mudslide.

58 people were still missing after a mudslide in Atoyacde Alvarez, a municipality near Acapulco in Guerrero state, President Enrique Pena Nieto said last night.

The president said 288 people had already been rescued from the site. - RTE.

September 19, 2013 - UNITED STATES - Something is killing whitetail deer by the dozens along the Clark Fork River.

Fish, Wildlife and Parks biologist Jay Kolbe drags a deer carcass from a
backwater of the Clark Fork River on Wednesday evening to confirm signs
of internal hemorrhaging caused by a virus spread among deer by biting
gnats. Dozens of deer have died west of Missoula in recent days in what
appears to be the first documented case of epizootic hemorrhage disease
west of the Continental Divide in Montana.

“This
feels strange,” Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks biologist Jay Kolbe
said as he walked through high grass on an island across from the former
Smurfit-Stone Container Corp. pulp mill. “We ought to be bumping into
whitetail all along here.”

Instead, the only deer visible were bloated carcasses sticking out of the water, or lying half-eaten on the shore. In the trees, three immature bald eagles, a golden eagle and several hawks shuffled about, waiting for another chance to feed on the carrion.

In a 30-minute walk, Kolbe came across 15 dead deer in various states of decay. He waded into a pool to pull one relatively fresh one to shore for closer examination. The fur on its lower jaw was still slightly bloodstained, and its mouth showed the signs of internal hemorrhaging.

“They come down to water because they’re just burning up inside,” Kolbe said. “I’m hoping to find a still-live one to dispatch so we can get a definite confirmation. These are too far gone to get good blood or tissue.”

More than 100 whitetails have died in this area since the second week of September.

A virus that causes epizootic hemorrhagic disease is the most likely culprit. It’s spread by biting gnats or midges, and primarily affects only whitetail deer. A similar disease commonly known as “blue tongue” hits antelope and has damaged populations throughout eastern Montana.

Mule deer, elk, antelope and bighorn sheep can also get EHD, but incidents are rare. Domestic cattle are generally not affected by either disease, although domestic sheep can be susceptible to blue tongue.

“I worked the Southside Road yesterday, and I was just floored by the level of mortality,” FWP biologist Vickie Edwards said. “They’re on gravel bars or floating in the river. In some places, you can really smell them. The ravens, golden eagles and bald eagles are having a heyday.”

***

Along Mercure Lane north of the pulp mill, homeowner Marcie Fitzgerald was worried about the number of carcasses piling up.

“There’s over 100 of them that we’ve counted,” Fitzgerald said Wednesday. “We first saw them a week and a half ago. Since then, it’s been steady.”

FWP wildlife manager Mike Thompson said because the deer appear to be dying of natural causes, there’s no provision to collect or remove the carcasses. He said if individual homeowners are having difficulties with scavengers or sanitation issues, the department would try to help with a solution.

“Most carcasses are out in woods where they normally would be,” Thompson said. “If they can haul it away, we’d appreciate the help. If they see a risk, we’ll try to figure out how to get somebody out to help them.”

It will take about two weeks to get a positive confirmation from the lab on the precise cause of death. But fortunately, there aren’t many other likely suspects. The deer don’t show any signs of poisoning or other foul play.

And mysteriously, the trouble zone seems confined to a short reach of river between the Erskine Fishing Access Site and Harpers Bridge along the Clark Fork, plus some parts of the Mill Creek drainage to the north. Edwards said the research is incomplete to explain if or when the outbreak might spread up or down the river corridor, or how far out from the banks it might extend.

“We haven’t heard of anybody seeing dead deer outside that area,” said Paul Roush, president of the Five Valleys Archery Club. “And I know a lot of guys who own property on that north side. It seems to be just in that one area.”

Big-game archery season started Sept. 7, shortly before residents along the river started noticing dying and dead deer. Some of the first reports came from anglers floating past the pulp mill toward Erskine FAS.

Edwards said one caller told her of a doe and fawn that were frolicking in her yard one evening, went down to the water the following morning, fell over and died. While the disease takes between three and seven days to run its course, the final throes appear to come on suddenly.

“They appear healthy and intact, and then you may see foam and blood coming out of the mouth and nose,” Edwards said. “We don’t know why. There are a lot of unknowns about EHD.”

There’s also no treatment or cure. The disease has been a regular threat on the east side of the Rocky Mountains, where it tends to show up in particularly dry late summers and falls. This is the first time it has been reported in Missoula County in local memory, although there have been cases in Idaho.

“The only thing that stops it is a hard freeze,” Edwards said. “We’re just hoping the steep mountains and ridges keep the spread controlled.”

EHD facts

• EHD spreads only by bug bites to susceptible wildlife species. It does not pass from mammal to mammal.
• EHD
does not affect the safety or quality of properly killed and processed
game meat. It is not transferable to humans either from live or dead
animals.
• People may legally collect the antlers of EHD-killed
deer. This is different from the prohibition on collecting game animal
parts when the animal is killed by unnatural means (such as being hit by
a car). Montana’s new roadkill collection law does not take effect
until Nov. 1.
• Anyone seeing a deer appearing weak, disoriented,
lame or in respiratory distress is asked to call the FWP Region 2
headquarters at 542-5500.

September 19, 2013 - ETHIOPIA - The Afar Rift in Ethiopia is marked by enormous gashes that signal the
breakup of the African continent and the beginnings of a new ocean
basin, scientists think.

The Afar Rift in Ethiopia as seen from a helicopter. Credit: Graham Dawes

The fractures appear eerily similar to seafloor spreading centers, the volcanic ridges
that mark the boundaries between two pieces of oceanic crust. Along the
ridges, lava bubbles up and new crust is created, slowly widening the
ocean basin.

But a look deep beneath the Afar Rift
reveals the birth announcements may be premature. "It's not as close to
fully formed seafloor spreading as we thought," said Kathy Whaler, a
geophysicist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

Whaler and her colleagues have spotted 120 cubic miles (500 cubic
kilometers) of magma sitting in the mantle under the Afar Rift. Hot
liquids like magma like to rise, so the discovery is a conundrum.

"We didn't expect this, because magma wants to pop up like a cork in
water; it's too buoyant compared to the surrounding medium in the
mantle," Whaler told LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

Models predict that at spreading ridges, magma should sit just under
the rifts, in the crust. That's what geoscientists see in the oceans, at
places like the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the Juan de Fuca Ridge. But not
only is the giant pool at Afar extremely deep, but it is also mostly
below the sleeping Badi volcano, many miles west of the scene of a 2005
series of underground magma intrusions, Whaler said.

"You just wouldn't expect to have a blob of magma still underneath this
other area," Whaler said. "It's one of the things we're still having a
lot of discussions about."

The findings, published Sept. 5 in the journal Nature Geoscience, add a
new twist to the Afar Rift puzzle. Thanks to intense international
attention — from scientists intrigued by the 2005 intrusions — the
region is one of the best-studied spreading centers in the world. But a
lively debate continues over whether the Afar Rift is a unique case or a
textbook example of a fracturing continent.Triple threat

The Afar region sits at the junction of three tectonic plates, all of
which are spreading apart. Here, Earth's brittle crust fractures as the
plates tear away from one another, but the mantle underneath adjusts by
stretching like warm plastic. The mantle rocks rising beneath the
thinning crust melt from lowered pressure, creating magma.

In 2005, a series of earthquakes in Dabbahu, Ethiopia, announced the arrival of new magma squeezing into the crust.
Vertical fingers of molten rock shot into underground fractures, 14 in
all. The longest intrusion was about 26 feet (8 meters) wide and spread
through 37 miles (60 km) of crust in just 10 days.

Whaler and her colleagues searched for the source of these vertical
injections, called dikes, with instruments that measure changes in
magnetic and electric fields in the Earth. Both are sensitive to
underground liquids, which have a higher electrical conductivity than
rock (meaning electrical currents have an easier time moving through
them).

The team discovered the feeder for the magma intrusions: a shallow,
small chamber directly under the dikes, about 4 miles (7 km) wide and 3
to 6 miles (5 to 10 km) below the surface.

Fractures along the Afar Rift in Ethiopia resemble those at a mid-ocean ridge, where two pieces of oceanic crust spread apart. Credit: Graham Dawes

Rare reservoir

But in the mantle, the layer beneath Earth's crust, a huge 18-mile-wide
(30 km) region of very high conductivity reaches down to a depth of 20
miles (35 km), well below the 12-mile-thick (20 km) crust. This giant
magma zone isn't one big pool, but a series of interconnected pockets,
scientists think.

The findings were bolstered by research in geochemistry, rock
composition and seismology from other teams, Whaler said. "The results
from standard electrical conductivity get a huge range, so the
additional information gives additional bounds. I suspect nobody would
have believed us without some supporting evidence from other
techniques."

For example, a study published in the journal Nature on July 4 shows
the mantle under the Afar region is about 212 degrees Fahrenheit (100
degrees Celsius) hotter than it should be. And although the crust is
thinner than in other spots around the planet, it is actually thicker
than models predict. Questions remain

Taken together, the recent discoveries suggest researchers still don't
understand how the final stages of breakup occur in continental crust,
Whaler said.

"Most people have said we can look at the Afar Rift and it's a good on-land analogue of mid-ocean ridges,"
she said. "But what this result says is, there is still quite a
distinct difference between the crust and upper mantle beneath a fully
formed spreading ridge and the Afar Rift."

For Roger Buck, a geophysicist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty
Earth Observatory who was not involved in the study, the discovery
raises questions about what controls the timing of magmatic activity
such as dike intrusions.

"A commonly held view is that long, quiet periods occur because there
is no magma available in the crust to trigger dike opening and volcanism
at spreading centers," Buck wrote in an accompanying editorial
published in Nature Geoscience. "However, the results ... bring into
question this standard view. Instead, there may always be large
quantities of magma available in the mantle and shallow crust at many
spreading centers." - Live Science.

September 19, 2013 - UNITED STATES - Dead sheepshead and pinfish speckled local waters such as the
canal behind Nikki Pingston’s house, fouling the air countywide this
week and souring the disposition of waterfront dwellers.

“There doesn’t seem to be anything done to the bodies of the fish,” Pingston said of the hundreds of scaly corpses in her canal this week. “That’s the first time I’ve seen the fish floating out there.”

Many have reported similar isolated patches of dead fish throughout the Indian River Lagoon, Mosquito Lagoon and Banana River in recent weeks. Others have spotted groups offish gasping for air.

Among the reports this past weekend were an estimated 1,000 dead fish in the Banana River near Mathers Bridge and Telemar Bay Marina, according to the state’s fish kill database.

The lagoon’s fish have been suffocating under an onslaught from this summer’s ongoing brown tide and several other algae blooms in the Indian River Lagoon, Mosquito Lagoon and Banana River, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Tripp Pingston, 6, and neighbor Rileigh Capozzi, 7, look at the canal water behind the Pingston family home
on Sandpiper Drive, where hundreds of dead fish are spread out. / Tim Shortt/FLORIDA TODAY

FWC researchers have documented patchy blooms of algae in all three of those water bodies, resulting in discolored water and fish kills in some spots.

Algae adds oxygen to the water during the day, as a byproduct of photosynthesis, but less so on cloudy days. Then at night, the algae consumes oxygen, at times depleting the water of enough oxygen to kill fish in the early morning hours.

But biologists say summer fish kills are nothing new this time of year, typically peaking in August and September in Brevard.

Warmer summer water holds less oxygen than cooler water. And bacteria in water can consume oxygen as algae and other organic matter rots.

“Just this past week, we’ve had several going on at once,” said Rich Paperno, research administrator at FWC’s Indian River Field Laboratory in Melbourne, of the recent fish kills.

“It seems it’s been fairly quiet in terms of fish kills,” Paperno added. “It’s typical for this time of year.”

According to a FLORIDA TODAY analysis of FWC’s fish kill database:

•
More than 1,500 fish kills were reported in Brevard County since
1973. Melbourne and Merritt Island had the most, more than 300 each, or a
combined 43 percent of the total reported in the county.• September has been the peak month for fish kills in Brevard, with 224 die-offs, or about 15 percent.•
The leading cause of fish kills in Brevard was low oxygen in the
water, accounting for 397 of the fish kills. Almost as many, 378,
happened for unknown reasons. Algae blooms were the third-leading cause,
219 reported die-offs.

WATCH: Algae-related fish kills plague Indian River Lagoon.

The database, which also includes incidences such as manatee, sea
turtle and bird deaths, is based on reports made to thestatewide Marine
Fish Kill Hotline. FWC follows up on each report,although they can’t
verify every account through direct observation.

Pingston can. Her canal off Sandpiper Drive links with Grand Canal, which runs along Tortoise Island and Lansing Island, where similar fish kills have been reported this week.

Paperno, of FWC, has seen it before.

“That Grand Canal seems to be a common place where they happen,” Paperno said.

“Any canal with a lot of housing along it is probably a hotspot,” he said. “You’ve taking out the natural habitat.”

Loss of mangroves, overfertilizing and septic tanks contribute to the algae explosions that can kill fish and other lagoon wildlife, biologists say.

Since moving to Sandpiper about a year ago, the Pingstons already have witnessed four dead manatees. Earlier this year, Nikki Pingston said she took a sick cormorant to a local wildlife hospital. It didn’t make it.

A recent Terra satellite image
shows a degassing plume drifting SW, another indication of the presence
of fresh magma at the volcano.

Kilauea (Hawai'i): There are signs of life on the Peace Day lava tube downhill of Pu`u
`O`o, with scouts reporting lava flows at the surface around the 1600
foot elevation within but near the top of the abandoned Royal Gardens
subdivision. This flow appears to be moving downhill and access will get
closer & easier with coming days, but reportedly is already on
private land belonging to one of the Kalapana ohana.

Halema`uma`u glow at first sunset.

There are certainly safety, logistic & legal issues to work out
given the need for new hiking routes and different hazards presented by a
different volcanic terrain, but in this particular case it's not
unreasonable to be hopeful that there will be a legal but more difficult
access to lava flows in a matter of days instead of weeks. Similar
flows in the past have taken days to weeks to make it to the flats where
there is easier access. At any point, there's never any guarantee of a
viewing on any particular day as the volcano is subject to change with
little notice, and we must really consider it a blessing that lava flows
have been accessible safely and relatively easily, and most remarkably,
continuously for the previous year and a half.

Meanwhile elsewhere on the volcano, glow from Kīlauea's summit is as
bright as ever, visible on recent clear nights by many residents
through the forest in nearby Volcano Village. The best viewing point
remains the Jaggar Museum within the National Park, and lava lake levels
in the Overlook Vent in Halema`uma`u crater remain near record highs
for this phase of the eruption, surely a sign of things yet to come at
the volcano's summit. The lava itself is not directly visible from the
overlook, at least not yet at the time of this writing... but the orange
glow in the evening, and especially at sunset and sunrise, just gets
better and better.

There are still lava flows active within the Kahauale`a Forest
Reserve, burning a little of the forest but also flowing in the interior
of the thickening flow field to the north of Pu`u `O`o. This area
remains out of legal access based on the multiple hazards associated
with that part of the volcano -- quickly moving lava flows, unstable
ground, methane explosions, forest fires, volcanic gases & smoke not
least among them -- but it can be viewed legally from the air,
dependent on occasional rain in the area.

Halema`uma`u glow after dark.

Reports are that there are some nice lava flows visible from the air
in this area, but that perhaps there is not enough volume flowing there
to account for the disruption of the Kalapana lava flows. Thus it's not
surprising to hear of renewed activity along the Peace Day tube, the
pipeline to recent lava flows near Kalapana, to account for some of the
missing volume. The final piece to understanding what's happening with
the volcano right now is observing a contraction of its summit in the
GPS signal, which may account for the rest of missing volume of lava
compared to what we have seen in recent months.

In any case, these are still glory days on Kīlauea, regardless of
how close we can get on a day-to-day basis, as we get to witness and be a
part of Pele's continual changes! I urge everyone to appreciate what
you CAN see today and how special that is in the grand scheme of things.
Good luck to all of us on our upcoming viewings!

The volcano produces
degassing, ash venting and relatively frequent small (strombolian-type)
explosions that generate small ash plumes rising a few 100 m.
Incandescence can be seen at night, IGPEN reported.

September 19, 2013 - CANADA -A passenger train and a double-decker city bus collided on the outskirts of Ottawa on Wednesday, killing six people on the bus and injuring 30 others, emergency officials said.

The front of the red double-decker bus was sheared off and the engine of the VIA Rail train had derailed, but the train cars remained upright with little noticeable damage.

Investigators examine the scene of an accident involving a bus and a train in Ottawa September 18, 2013. REUTERS/Chris Wattie

Emergency workers take a person away on a
stretcher at the scene of an accident involving a bus and a train in
Ottawa September 18, 2013. REUTERS/Chris Wattie

"Paramedics had to declare five persons deceased on scene, nothing
could be done. And of the 31 that were transported, we've just been
advised that one was deceased in hospital, for a total of six deaths at
this point," Anthony DiMonte, chief of Ottawa Paramedic Services, told a
news conference.

He said 11 of the people taken to hospital had been in critical condition.

Ambulances
and fire trucks swarmed the scene in the rural west end of Canada's
capital city as emergency workers helped train passengers disembark past
the wreckage of the bus. Five bodies appeared to be wrapped in yellow
tarps beside the train track. One had a purse and a backpack next to it.

One
passenger on the bus said the driver did not seem to notice the
oncoming train or that the track-level signals were flashing. He said
some passengers tried to warn the driver before the collision.

An official photographs the scene of an accident involving a bus and a train in Ottawa September 18, 2013. REUTERS/Chris Wattie

Emergency workers carry an injured person away
on a stretcher at the scene of an accident involving a bus and a train
in Ottawa September 18, 2013. REUTERS/Chris Wattie

Emergency workers take a person away on a
stretcher at the scene of an accident involving a bus and a train in
Ottawa September 18, 2013. REUTERS/Chris Wattie

Police examine the scene of an accident involving a bus and a train in Ottawa September 18, 2013. REUTERS/Chris Wattie

"From what I can tell the bus driver did not notice that these
train-tracks signal lights were on and the gates were down. People
screamed on the bus shortly before the crash because he was not
stopping," Gregory Mech, a passenger on the top level of the
double-decker bus, told CBC Television.

"I could see
that there were bodies on the train tracks. It was horrible. There's
just no other way to explain it. Some people were upset and crying."

Ottawa
emergency officials said the collision occurred at 8:48 a.m. EDT (1248
GMT). VIA Rail, which operates national rail passenger service in
Canada, said there were no major injuries reported on the train.

Passengers on the train, which was heading to Toronto, said they felt a small impact.

"All
I felt was a bump, and I saw a bit of smoke. I thought we were going
off the track ... I was afraid we were going to flip over," passenger
Robert Gencarelli told reporters on the scene.

He said he was startled when he got off the train and saw how badly the bus was damaged.

"That hit home."

Emergency workers take a person away at the scene of an accident involving a bus and a train in Ottawa September 18, 2013. REUTERS/Chris Wattie

Police examine the scene of an accident involving a bus and a train in Ottawa September 18, 2013. REUTERS/Chris Wattie

Bystanders stand around the scene where a Via
Rail train collided with a double-decker bus in Ottawa September 18,
2013 in this handout photo. REUTERS/Darryl Praill/Handout via Reuters

Another train passenger, who did not give his name, said he saw the bus rolling toward the train tracks and knew the collision was about to happen.

"I saw it before it happened. I was expecting something. There was a big bang. ... The bus was rolling. It didn't stop."

The crash occurred at a level crossing surrounded by corn fields.

A reunification center was set up for families and friends looking for passengers on the bus and train, the City of Ottawa said.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he was "deeply saddened" to hear about the collision, which came just months after a runaway freight train crash and explosion killed 50 people in Lac-Megantic, Quebec.

"Our thoughts and prayers are (with) the families of those involved," Harper said on Twitter.

Canada's two big railroads - Canadian National Railway Co and Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd - are reviewing safety standards after the July 6 Lac-Megantic crash that destroyed the center of the small Quebec town. - Reuters.

September 19, 2013 - BAHAMAS - A tornado touched down near the Lynden Pindling International Airport on
New Providence Island in Nassau, Bahamas around 2:45 p.m. on Sep. 17,
2013. We have the photos and video of this impressive sight below.

Airport workers run from a tornado at Lynden Pindling International Airport.
(Image: iWitnessWeather contributor dixon456)

September 19, 2013 - SUN -Almost every measure of solar activity flatlined over the weekend.
The event, though not unprecedented, is odd considering that our local
star has just passed what is supposed to be the peak of its solar cycle,
when activity is at its highest.

The quiet face of the sun, devoid of sunspots, during a previous period of low activity in February. NASA/SDO

“It really underscores this solar cycle playing out as being pretty
benign,” said Robert Rutledge, lead of the forecast office at the NOAA/National Weather Service Space Weather Prediction Center.
“This has been by any measure a really pretty quiet cycle, and I think
we shouldn’t expect the second half to be any different.”

The sun goes through a natural 11-year variation called the solar cycle. Periods of high activity generally coincide with increased numbers of sunspots and energetic bursts such as flares and coronal mass ejections. Before it started, scientists’ predictions for this solar cycle ranged from very eventful to rather lackluster.

“Quite frankly, we’re not very good at solar cycle predictions,” said Rutledge.

Measurements of the sun’s X-ray activity flatlined over the weekend. NOAA/GOES 15

Considering that this solar cycle is the weakest in more than a century, some researchers are already predicting that it could be the start of an ebb in overall activity, with several more low cycles ahead.

But Rutledge pointed out that our fundamental understanding of how the sun works is still incomplete. The sun could remain quiet or an uptick in activity, including the possibility of extreme space weather, could come at any time.

This weekend’s low activity is within the variation that the sun normally experiences and scientists don’t really know what its underlying cause might be.

A particular snow storm on Earth can be attributed to moving weather fronts, said Rutledge, but we don’t have that detailed of an understanding of what drives changes on the sun. Within a week or so, solar activity should return to normal. - WIRED.

September 19, 2013 - SPACE - A new report prepared by the Federal Space Agency (ROSCOSMOS)
circulating in the Kremlin today states that Comet C/2012 S1 has made a
number of “unexplained orbital adjustments” around the planet Mars
seemingly to better align itself with the Red planets strange moon
Phobos.

According to this report, Comet C/2012 S1 was first discovered on 21 September 2012 by Russian amateur astronomers Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok using the International Scientific Optical Network, thus giving this comet its name ISON. Phobos is the larger and closer of the two natural satellites of Mars and with a mean radius of 11.1 km (6.9 mi) it is 7.24 times more massive than the second moon Deimos.

Important to note about Phobos, this report continues, was in 1958 when Russian astrophysicist Iosif Samuilovich Shklovsky, studying the secular acceleration of Phobos’s orbital motion, suggested a “thin sheet metal” structure for Phobos, a suggestion which led to speculations that Phobos was of artificial origin.

Shklovsky based his analysis on estimates of the upper Martian atmosphere’s density, and deduced that for the weak braking effect to be able to account for the secular acceleration, Phobos had to be very light — one calculation yielded a hollow iron sphere 16 kilometers (9.9 mi) across but less than 6 cm thick.

In a February 1960 letter to the journal Astronautics, Fred Singer, then science advisor to U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, said of Shklovsky’s theory:

“If the satellite is indeed spiraling inward as deduced from astronomical observation, then there is little alternative to the hypothesis that it is hollow and therefore Martian made. The big ‘if’ lies in the astronomical observations; they may well be in error. Since they are based on several independent sets of measurements taken decades apart by different observers with different instruments, systematic errors may have influenced them.”

Subsequently, the systemic data
errors that Singer predicted were said found to exist, and the
Shklovsky’s study was called into doubt, and accurate measurements of
the orbit available by 1969 said showed that the discrepancy did not
exist. Singer’s critique was said justified when earlier studies were
discovered to have used an overestimated value of 5 cm/yr for the rate
of altitude loss, which was later revised to 1.8 cm/yr. The secular
acceleration is now attributed to tidal effects, which had not been
considered in the earlier studies.

Soviet scientists, however, this report says, were not convinced by
the American scientist’s arguments and in 1988 launched two probes,
Phobos 1 and Phobos 2, towards Mars to gather more information.

Phobos 1 was “lost” while Phobos 2 was able to establish an orbit around the Mars moon Phobos when it was “attacked” by a still unexplained space craft that showed itself in the last image beamed back to Earth before it was destroyed.

“One reason to suspect that Phobos is not a captured asteroid is its density. Analysis of Mars Express radio science data
gave new information about the mass of Phobos based on the
gravitational attraction it exerts on the spacecraft. The team concluded
that Phobos is likely to contain large voids, which makes it less
likely to be a captured asteroid. Its composition and structural
strength seem to be inconsistent with the capture scenario.”

As some experts have noted that Phobos may be an “ancient spacecraft” marooned in Mars orbit, this report continues, the possibility that Comet ISON may be one too cannot be ruled out either.

The reason for this assessment, ROSCOSMOS experts state, are the “unexplained orbital adjustments” Comet ISON has apparently made on its approach to Mars and were verified by American amateur astronomer Bruce Gary on 12 August when he became the first to see Comet ISON again after its sojourn behind the sun during June, July and part of August.

Alan MacRobert at Skyandtelescope.com said about Gray’s 12 August discovery: “Comet ISON is about two magnitudes (six times) fainter than it should be compared to the calculations that first led astronomers to predict it would become a grand naked-eye sight before dawn in early December.”

Astronomer Ignacio Ferrin, with the University of Antioquia in Colombia, in a paper submitted to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society further noted that: “Comet ISON has been on a standstill for more than 132 days … a rather puzzling feat.”

Many in the Western media have billed Comet ISON as “the comet of the century,” this is because it is a sungrazer and its believed to be gaseous tail will expand to millions of kilometers making it appear as bright as the full moon to the naked eye in the coming months.

On 1 October it will pass within 0.07 AU from Mars, about six times closer than it will ever come to Earth and on 28 November, when it is closest to the sun, it will fly through the sun’s atmosphere just a little more than 1.1 million kilometers (720,000 miles) from the solar surface, after which it will be making its inner solar system passage safely 0.426 A.U., or a little over 63 million kilometers from Earth even on its closest approach on 26 December.

This ROSCOSMOS report summarizes its findings by stating that it “cannot be ruled out of theory” that Comet ISON is not a “dirty ice-ball” comet at all, but may, in fact, be an interstellar object under intelligent control on a mission to Phobos for as an yet unexplained mission.